Various materials are formed into rolls, such as tape, thermal paper, wire, fishing line, and film. Such material is flexible and generally relatively thin. Commonly, the roll is formed by winding the material onto a spool. A basic spool (e.g. item 101 of FIG. 1), which may be referred to as a “core”, has right circular cylindrical inner and outer surfaces, having open ends and usually being relatively thin in the radial direction. Such a core may be formed from paper, plastic, metal or cardboard, for example. In some cases, the walls may be thicker to provide more resistance to deformation. The cylindrical opening in the middle of the spool is useful for holding the roll or for placing it on a spindle so that the roll may rotate about the central axis of the spool as material is removed from the roll.
Other forms of a spool, referred to as reels (e.g. item 600 of FIG. 6), have lateral sides extending radially outward from the ends of an open-ended cylindrical core. For holding flat material, the two lateral sides are spaced apart by a width slightly more than the width of the material, such as in a film reel. This is useful for materials that are not adhesive so that they may not form a stable roll by just wrapping the material around itself.
In many cases, rolls of material are used manually by people. For example, a painter may hold a roll of masking tape in his hand and pull a portion of the tape off the roll. To apply the tape to a wall or side of a car being painted, it is generally necessary for the painter to tear a portion of tape off the roll, put the roll down somewhere, such as in a pocket, and then use two hands to apply the tape to the surface. This limits the length of a continuous piece of tape that can be applied by one person. In order to apply a very long continuous piece of tape, the painter may require the help of a second person who holds the roll of tape while the painter uses two hands to apply each portion while one end is still attached to the roll so that a further portion, connected to the previous portion, may then be removed from the roll and similarly applied to the surface as one continuous piece. Such a continuous piece makes removal faster and cleaner. The user does not have to pick at numerous edges to restart the de-masking process.
In general, for example when working in a garage or a shop, there may be no suitable horizontal surfaces to place the tape down on while the user is applying a strip. Such locations may also be dirty so that the edges of the tape may become dirty when laid down.